Just installed Rachio 8 Zone Gen 2 and overall it was very easy. I have a few suggestion regarding the actual design of the wall plate and cover. It would be great if the connectors were closer to the hole that the wires go through because my sprinkler installer ran the cable through a plastic PVC and the exposed wires just would not reach the connections on the Rachio wall plate even when it was right above the pipe opening. I had to cut the PVC to expose more of the wire.
Another thing is that the cover for the wall plate has the latch on the bottom. I did not keep that in mind at first and mounted the wall plate right above the PVC opening where the wires come out of and of course after I connected everything I realized that I can’t put the cover on because the pipe is blocking the latch hole…so had to cut more of the pipe. Would be great if the latch was on the side (like on my old Rainbird controller).
Finally, it would be good if there was an easier way to access the manual buttons on the wall plate instead of taking off the entire cover.
Just some suggestions for the future 
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Another suggestion for the cover…it has a very tight bottom lip/latch on it. If it is close to the PVC pipe holding the wires (like mine) it becomes difficult to remove the cover. I have had to use a screwdriver with a lot of force to pry the latch to pop off the cover. Maybe a better lip design ?
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+1 to both comments.
I no longer can remove my cover because of srudenko’s second paragraph.
I’ll have to carefully cut the PVC as stated, which I haven’t done yet.
Thank you.
Best regards,
Bill
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I had the EXACT same issue, and it was immediately apparent as soon as I unboxed the unit that it was going to be an issue… The code at the time my old Toro unit was installed was to have the conduit ran up into the bottom of the Toro case and mounted using a lock nut (just like a regular electrical box). When mounting the Gen 2 the conduit is now just loose and I will need to get an anchor to affix it. My suggestion on the case design is to eliminate the bottom area completely on the unit as I’m sure there aren’t any PCB’s there and redesign the cover to have a soft touch click and open mechanism (similar to a car cup holder cover) so the cover would be attached and simply press and it would fold up or down to access the manual buttons or wiring. This would also make it feel like a more premium product in my opinion. If any of my s-uggestions help, or you need additional ideas let me know as I can explain further if need be. In all honesty, I love the product etc… but this was a design error that in my opinion should have been caught in the initial stages of design. While I like passing along the information and suggestions, I feel like a beta tester. Maybe a reimbursement of some kind like a free Gen 3/4 or something as a reward (hint, hint). I’m serious about that too. I just provided feedback on a mistake an engineer was paid to design.
-Craig
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I made the same mistake when I was installing Rachio at my brother’s place.
